Game Plan
by digby
When asked about Joe Biden's comments in which he said that extending Unemployment insurance is the right thing to and also to keep money flowing through the economy as it recovers, right wing propagandist Ernest Istook explained on Hardball that the last thing you ever want to do is take money out of the economy by raising taxes. It devolved into near gibberish from everyone on the show from that point on. I'm paraphrasing, but essentially it came down to "people need to have jobs, not to be dependent on government." It's sad that they have run out of unemployment but the problem is that businesses are sitting on 2 billion dollars because they afraid to spend their money without knowing how much they are going to be paying in taxes. Oh, and "the American people" told all the freshman Teabaggers they want their social security and Medicare cut.
I was going to try to unpack this nonsense, but it's the end of a long week and I just don't have the energy. Suffice to say that if you listened to his talking points you came away believing that the Democrats are proposing to enact a 2 billion dollar tax on businesses to pay for unemployment benefits.
Steve Benen put it this way earlier:
The conversation seems to have gotten wildly off track in Washington, and it's not getting better. Republicans' first post-election priority yesterday was going after NPR and opposing unemployment aid that boosts the economy. Going forward, the emboldened GOP wants to gut health care, cut spending, and protect a failed tax policy -- but creating jobs isn't part of the gameplan.
It'll be up to President Obama and congressional Dems to try to get the political world focused again.
I think not creating jobs is definitely in their game plan. They've made it clear:
“the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
By any means necessary.
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